I'm not much of an economist but isn't NASA's budget a drop in the bucket compared to what the United States spent on maintaining and improving its Navy fleet in 2009? Some quick checks of the Wikipedia pages for both budgets show that US military spending dwarfs NASA spending. I'm curious why this article seems to think that NASA is "too expensive," and needs to justify such a cost.<p>The European aristocracy fueled explorations far and wide, killed many more people, and now a large percentage of humans travel around the world daily. If we sent more people to space far and wide would it not follow the same pattern if something eventually came of it? I'm not sure that anyone knew the early explorers would come back with boats filled with gold and precious resources but perhaps we will come back with ships filled with rare elements, minerals and gasses.<p>I found this article to be rather pessimistic. I realize that military spending is a necessity so long as our geo-political situation continues to remain unstable. However it seems to my uneducated view of the subject that the US could cut a good fraction of its military spending, continue to dominate in conventional warfare and reduce the cost of space exploration greatly in the long term.<p>Maybe someone who knows more about it can enlighten me. I, like many, get wide-eyed when I think of space and dream, hopelessly, of one day experiencing it for myself.
This is a kind of ridiculous article. It entirely ignores NASA's Earth Science work, which gets the largest allocation of science funding in the FY2014 budget (almost $2B).<p>Caveat: I work with a team of NASA & contractor Earth scientists. I think they'd all tell you they don't need to go search for a justification; justifications are self-evident. Here's one: Maintain the climate record.
I think that the following comment I wrote on an analogous story a while ago helps to frame this in a better context:<p>""" I have been obsessed with the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs since childhood and I've read the first hand accounts of astronauts, flight directors, engineers, administrators, and journalists covering the programs. What has consistently struck me is that although the programs were marketed - if you may - along the lines of their exciting thrust into the unknown, the programs were executed based upon a cold rational calculus that extended sabre rattling and the grounds of engagement beyond the surface of our planet.<p>Yes, for me it might be one of the greatest achievements of humanity, but for the people paying for the show all of that work was for one thing and one thing only; to claim the high ground swiftly and decisively before the enemy. For anyone with the ability to put a capsule into orbit and to retrieve it, also possessed the ability to spy on the other party, safely launch and drop a nuclear warhead into the other party's major cities, and one-up the enemy in a show of technical prowess and strength - something that would persuade those on the fence to pick the right side if it were. That's what these programs were sadly all about and that's why they were ended once the high ground was decisively seized.<p>The reason why there isn't an Apollo-esque or Manhattan-esque thrust towards landing on Mars is because there is no substantial tactical, economic, or political advantage to be gained from the act. Sure in the long term there will be amazing pay-offs if we open up the solar system and expand outwards, but right now in the minds of the people who are actually cutting the cheques that pay-off is too distant, too abstract, too foolhardy, and too unsettling to justify any kind of support.<p>Now some people choose to rue the cause behind our current Earth-bound civilization, but I think this is actually a good thing. It ensures that when we do manage to find a way to reach out to the stars we will do it for the right reasons and our exploration will continue from one frontier to another because of that fact. """<p>Source: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653483" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653483</a>
See also: "A Rocket To Nowhere" by Maciej Cegłowski. <a href="http://idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm" rel="nofollow">http://idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm</a><p><pre><code> Future archaeologists trying to understand what the Shuttle
was for are going to have a mess on their hands. Why was
such a powerful rocket used only to reach very low orbits,
where air resistance and debris would limit the useful
lifetime of a satellite to a few years? Why was there both
a big cargo bay and a big crew compartment? What kind of
missions would require people to assist in deploying a
large payload? Why was the Shuttle intentionally crippled
so that it could not land on autopilot? ① Why go through
all the trouble to give the Shuttle large wings if it has
no jet engines and the glide characteristics of a brick?
Why build such complex, adjustable main engines and then
rely on the equivalent of two giant firecrackers to provide
most of the takeoff thrust? Why use a glass thermal
protection system, rather than a low-tech ablative shield?
And having chosen such a fragile method of heat protection,
why on earth mount the orbiter on the side of the rocket,
where things will fall on it during launch?</code></pre>
As negative as the article sounds, I agree with the overall premise. With the same amount of money that's currently being sucked into their manned program, infinitely more and better scientific endeavors can be funded. Imagine not only having a mars rover, but an entire robotic base on mars that could possibly fuel itself and send out dozens of missions with air-and-land-based drones. Or perhaps the same on Venus or Titan, or even better equipment for monitoring Earth. Far-fetched, sure, but with the kind of budget the manned program is pulling in, I believe things like that are possible.<p>With that said, I'm OK with us still having a space station with people in it, because it keeps the engines of the national space machine greased. It won't be long before the United States is faced with a new contender for Global Superpower, and space will definitely become the place to be. If you want to control the land, you must control the sea, and if you want to control the sea, you must control space. As our military becomes more and more drone-heavy, I wouldn't be surprised if Space Command drastically increases its scope and reach as an organization. Its much faster to control a drone across the world in real time from space than it is from Virginia.<p>Couple military need with the new blood of private contractors (spaceX and its like), I believe space will be a big deal once again in a few decades.
I'd like to see NASA focus entirely on unmanned missions. To me, humans in space is mildly interesting, but the data from robotic missions to the outer planets and Mars as well as from the various space telescopes is nothing less than fascinating.<p>And when you start comparing the relative costs, it seems like a no brainer. For the budget required to sustain manned spaceflight in its relatively trivial form, you could launch a space telescope, two Mars missions, an outer-planet mission, a comet mission, an asteroid mission, and a Sun mission, all robotic, every year. There'd be a constant stream of new data of interest to scientists and the public. The inevitable failed missions would just be blips on the radar, and technical progress on the exploratory robots would go faster than ever.<p>Over the decades launch and return technology will improve, especially as private industry gets more involved in space travel, and once we have cheaper and more reliable ways to get into space, gradually it may make more and more sense for humans to return and live there (or it won't, which is okay, too).
This is a great essay...it illuminates the interplay between science, politics, idealism, and human endeavor better than most things I've read that bemoan the underfunding of NASA: Human-based missions are unfeasible if we want to expand space exploration....yet the public can't get behind robot-missions, and thus, the lack of funding and interest.<p>This conflict mimics the technological dichotomy in the rest of society...how can we continue to value human contributions when computers can do things so much more efficiently and accurately? My opinion is that there are plenty of things that require a "human-in-the-middle" for the forseeable future, earthside. But in space, it's much harder to justify, based on the plain physics of sending a human into space.
Tl;dr: NASA was only incidentally about science, it was cover for funding military/geopolitical goals. Once those goals (moon, shuttle) were achieved, NASA's risks and costs are exceedingly hard to justify.
Rather than make the argument that human spaceflight is worthless because robots can do science better, I'd like to see someone make the (implied, underlying) argument that space programs should be primarily about basic scientific research, rather than all the other things assorted people seem to want them to be about (jobs, national prestige, technological spin-offs, exploiting space for economic or military purposes, off-world colonization for human survival, etc).
There is one thing I know for certain: all of life, including humans, are going to use up resources available to it until they are gone. We like to think we will eventually reach a point of awareness about the importance of sustainability and live a low-impact life; respecting each other, the environment, and the entire biosphere.<p>We all accept the importance of this message; few of us are able or willing to make the necessary changes. How many of us use a computer for 8+ hours a day?<p>NASA, and any space program or company trying to develop the necessary technologies to reach orbit and live in space, are doing us a great favor. There is going to be a point when we need resources outside of Earth. This includes water, places to grow food, metals, etc. It also includes going into orbit and conducting Earth Science research to help us use our current resources more efficiently. An exploding human population and desire to give everyone a fighting chance at a happy life require that we reach outside of our atmosphere.<p>To say that NASA is no longer justified seems ignorant. That being said, as a government agency, there is a lot of wasted money at NASA. Obviously this is changing as they keep giving away private contracts (which is generally good).
The real irony of the article isn't the truth of what it says, but what it doesn't say -- no politician wants to vote for a change in NASA's status. Killing NASA lurks just below killing Social Security in the politically untouchable sweepstakes.<p>This may all seem trivial ten or twenty years from now, when private enterprise has taken over 90% of what NASA does -- a process that's already begun.
Whether you agree with this article or not, it makes no difference. NASA is an extremely small portion of the US budget. If you want to cut waste, look at defense spending. It's OK to spend a small fraction of available money on research. NASA is changing. Most of it's work is now down by private contractors.<p>There are ~60 launches scheduled for this year (<a href="http://spaceflightnow.com/tracking/" rel="nofollow">http://spaceflightnow.com/tracking/</a>). Most are launching communication satellites, some are ISS resupply missions, and others are for research. China is developing a space station and private space companies are doing well. Year over year the amount of launches has been increasing and there is no reason to believe this trend won't continue, with or without NASA. NASA has served a great purpose, and it may or may not continue to do so. Calling it a tragedy seems loaded and misguided.
I don't get the fascination with manned space flight. To me it's such an obvious waste of money. I find the robots we send to space a million times more fascinating.
In Houston, there are a lot of folks that work over at JSC or are involved with NASA stuff. There is the reminder of better days, and of great things that could've been but never were.<p>It's really depressing to talk to experienced engineers (even if they're not NASA proper, but lend/leased from Lockheed or someone else) who are like "Yeah, we could build that, no question, but who will pay for it?"<p>It's even more depressing to talk to normal engineers at any meetup or hackathon, because there's the same sort of awe and mystique about NASA and what it could be doing, but also the tacit acknowledgement that the agency is fucked in the head--you usually end up with a bunch of Boomers old enough to remember when NASA actually did things that were cool.<p>The most frustrating thing is that the technology works and has been in production for half a century now, but the agency is unable or unwilling to fund manned missions to completion--and these questions of "Should we even put people in space? Why not robots lol?" could be rendered moot if somebody just cut a goddamn check. The people know this. The engineers know this. The astronauts know this. And yet, no check.<p>Worse still, you can't keep sending robots into space because nobody cares. Sure, a few people here or there who love ~=science=~ can appreciate the pursuit of knowledge for its own means, but for everyone else there needs to be a payoff. The only payoffs come, though, in either moving people off-planet to start colones or moving material back on-planet (which is fairly silly in its own way). If you don't do either of those things, then <i>no shit</i> everyone would rather your funding go to aging Boomers or poor urban youths or starving hillbillies or students loans or fighting the war on drugs or any number of more immediate short-term pains our democracy faces.<p>At least we've got a few folks funding this privately--as for NASA, though, the best thing to do would be bow out of space all together and open-source and make public domain all of their research and patents.
Go for the children. Go for the schools. Go for APPs and market NASA to kids that way. Engage schools by soliciting where to point a camera, where to send a rover. By allowing hundreds if not thousands of kids to vote/choose maybe they can interest them enough to get adults to wonder why Congress does not act.<p>in other words, they need a strong marketing division that can take the droll numbers of science and present it to schools and online that anyone can understand.<p>The get attached to some cereal boxes, cookies, and lunch boxes.
Just look here <a href="https://www3.orau.gov/NPDoc/Catalog" rel="nofollow">https://www3.orau.gov/NPDoc/Catalog</a><p>NASA does quite a bit of Earth Science and Aeronautics
Cost should never be an issue since NASA is an arm of the federal government. Have the Federal Reserve fund NASA directly. Double the budget. Hire STEM majors. Pay them well. NASA's achievements should only be limited by technical capabilities. Leave finance out of it.